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He isn't meant to wake up after the war, but he does. The shinobi surrounding his bed wear Konoha-green flak jackets and proud Leaf symbols on their headbands. He doesn't remember all their names. They didn't matter. Weren’t relevant to the plan, as devised by the chain of manipulators that made up his predecessors. To him, their lives were insignificant, because there was nothing they could give, and no way they could stop him. So, they fell under the umbrella of ‘shinobi’, brainwashed soldiers of a broken system.
Despite everything he did, all the pain he caused and the lives he took, Naruto grins at him, as though meeting an old friend.
“Hey,” Naruto greets. “Welcome back.”
“Hey,” he returns with an unused voice, “what the fuck?”
Obito is dead. So dead, actually, that his body broke apart into fucking dust. No cremation needed. He doesn't know how biodegradable his corpse dirt was or where the wind scattered it, but regardless, it was very much no longer functional, and extremely unrecoverable.
So, what the fuck?
When he lifts his hands in front of his face, he finds them fleshy and warm. Human. Whole. The artificial cells he got familiar with from his teenage years and into adulthood are gone, and as he turns his hands over, he can't find so much as a scar.
This may not be the Pure Lands. He might be in purgatory, stuck here by the measure of his sins and the weight of his guilt. That’s fair retribution, isn’t it? For trying to place the world in an eternal dream.
Some of the other shinobi leave, the nameless ones, sending well-wishes as they go. That medic girl, the one who reminds him of Rin, scrubs furiously at her eyes, like she’s been crying. Surely not for him; he can’t even remember if they’ve ever said a word to one another. Maybe they have. The war was long and endless, and he doesn’t remember most of it. For so long, he was acting on autopilot, following a script.
Naruto stays. He leans on the bed rail, his face a little too close, and his grin eases into something muted. “I have a message from Kakashi-sensei.”
Obito turns his head, wondering where that little shit is. If anyone’s to blame for why Obito’s here right now, it’s probably him. He always has a trick up his sleeve. But he can’t see Kakashi in the immediate space around his hospital bed, and when he tries to prop himself up, his whole body screams at him to stay down. Great. Won’t be doing that again anytime soon.
“He said, ‘You can’t get away that easily. Atonement comes from the living, Dead Last. Stop trying to run.’”
Obito rolls his eyes dramatically and huffs, settling back on the bed. “Yeah, ‘cause that was my intention when I died. The only thing on my mind at the time, actually. You caught me.”
Naruto’s face scrunches up. “Were you always this sarcastic? Man, I don’t remember. Maybe you’re defective.”
He distinctly remembers gesturing to the gaping hole Kakashi made in his chest and exclaiming that there was nothing in his heart, so at the very least, he’s always had a flair for the dramatic. He waves his arm dismissively. “Irrelevant. Where is Bakashi? I gotta rough him up a bit for dragging me back here without consent.”
A tired smile tugs at the corner of the kid’s lips, and he shrugs. “He’s busy.”
“Busy,” Obito repeats, deadpan. “I’m over here, alive, with arms and legs—two each, even! And he’s busy. ”
“Yep.” Naruto pushes off the bed rail to stand at full height. He looks a bit older. More mature. Obito remembers that runt barking words at him nonstop during their battle, and man, he doesn’t miss the headache. “Sakura says you’ll be weak for a while. You have basically no chakra right now.”
It almost makes him laugh. An Uchiha with chakra exhaustion that severe? What a farce. It must have to do with whatever trashy forbidden jutsu Kakashi cobbled up to drag him back to this damn rock.
Naruto waves, flashing another grin. “I’ll come visit again real soon, okay?”
When Naruto leaves, he’s alone. He’s hooked up to medical equipment, an IV needle pinching the back of his hand. It’s hard not to tear it out. How long has it been since he’s received medical attention that wasn’t from alien plant people in a cave to the north? Strange. Inconvenient, too, to feel pain again. Even as his body disintegrated, he didn’t feel a thing.
Obito brings his right hand up and touches his face. How strange it is to not feel the ridges of scar tissue along his cheek. Is this even his body? It’s surely not a puppet; they wouldn’t have him wired up in a hospital bed if it were.
When he brings his hand back down, he sees that there are small cuts along the whorls of his fingertips, after all. Minor scarring. He tilts his head, feeling the divots with the pad of his thumb, wondering when he got them. They might be training scars. Out in the wilds, sometimes the world bites back. Trees can leave splinters, and sharp rocks will cut grooves as one hefts their weight up them. Most shinobi have tiny scars like that, no matter how vetted. Some of these are pale, though, and don’t tan. Maybe from fire, he thinks, since he trained with that element so much as a child. Lightning jutsu can do that, too, and he’s gone up against plenty of specialists over the years— thanks, Kakashi.
Obito sighs and flops uselessly onto the bed, staring at the ceiling. Whatever. He’ll atone, if that’s what Kakashi wants. Then, perhaps he can meet Rin in the Pure Lands, and he won’t feel so burdened.
Kakashi’s medic student is the one tending to him. Was Sakura her name? She comes in the next day to change his IV bag and checks his vitals, refusing to meet his eyes. Obito doesn’t blame her. This is how they should all react to his presence, really. Naruto’s too soft for his own good, though in retrospect, he uses that softness to his advantage. Manipulative little shit.
When she sits next to him to perform a full scan, she angles the bed so he can sit up, since his weak little arms don’t give him the strength to do so on his own power. He watches her curiously, the green glow of her medical ninjutsu so nostalgic. Rin would’ve worked in the hospital if she got to live, he thinks. She would have been a medic whose name reached the far corners of the Elemental Nations like Lady Tsunade, and Obito would have been Hokage. Kakashi would—
Hm.
What would Kakashi be doing in a world like that? What is he doing now? Would he have joined ANBU if his teammates never left him, and would he have been made a jōnin instructor? If he hadn’t put on that mask and worn Obito’s facade, what would his personality have been like? Obito watched from a distance as his teammate morphed into someone new, with the quirks of a boy long dead. It was nice, though, when he started to smile.
Kakashi would still be a jōnin instructor, he decides. For all the mistakes his old friend made along the way, those kids mean the world to him.
“Say,” he calls, and watches Sakura flinch, “if I bother you so much, why are you here?”
Sakura looks up from her scan and glares for all of five seconds before it falls away. She lowers her head and returns to her task. “This is my duty. I’ll see it to the end.”
He raises an eyebrow. “That’s noble and all, but Kid, there’s gotta be a couple other medics you could swap rooms with. If you have an issue with a patient, it might be better to distance yourself than stick it out, y’know?”
The medic’s ninjutsu cuts off abruptly, and she squeezes her hands into fists, resting them on her lap. He thinks she might hit him. Which is fine; he deserves it. If Obito needs to be a punching bag for her to relieve her stress, then she can go right ahead. But that might be a problem when she comes up against less scummy patients. Not a good look, is it? “I won’t entrust this job to anyone else,” she mutters. “I made a promise.”
The promise made between Obito and Kakashi nearly destroyed them.
Obito throws his arms behind his head and sighs, looking out the window at the annoyingly blue skies and the happy little clouds, mocking him as he lies here in a hospital bed with fucking chakra exhaustion. “Whatever,” he mutters. “Do what you want. But promises aren’t meant to be a ball and chain, y’know. If it’s hurting you, let it go.”
He feels Sakura watching him, but she doesn’t speak. The scan continues, and he closes his eyes, feeling the cooling sensation fanning across his body and remembering the last time he really felt it.
Beneath a collapsed cave, spreading outwards from his eye, as Rin bestowed their teammate with his final gift.
What is atonement, anyway? The thought comes to Obito while on the can, actually. Not the ideal place to have profound, philosophical debates, but hey, that’s how it goes sometimes. The bathroom attached to his hospital room is basically a broom closet, consisting of a toilet, a sink, a single flickering light bulb, and a paper towel dispenser. Oh, and an emergency call button. He hopes he never has to use it. It doesn’t have a mirror, or even a proper counter. In some ways, it’s more claustrophobic than his cave. It sucks that that particular fear followed him into purgatory, doesn’t it?
Obito has recovered well enough to shakily hobble his way from his bed to the bathroom like a speedy eighty-year-old man, and is grateful he no longer has to ask for assistance every time he needs to take a piss. When this chakra exhaustion leaves him, he’s going to march straight to Kakashi’s apartment and kick him in the balls. Has he never heard of letting the dead rest in peace?
He still hasn’t seen Kakashi. There are conversations he’s overheard that mention his name and ‘Hokage’ in the same sentence, so Obito thinks he knows what happened. It’s hard not to smile with vindictive glee. Kakashi, the Sixth Hokage. Poor bastard probably cries himself to sleep with a title like that. He’s never wanted the hat, not even a little. Not as a kid, a teen, or an adult. For all that he’s scarred and burdened by the heartache in his life, he likes field work. Kakashi was never happier than he was after meeting his Team 7.
That’s just it, isn’t it? Their Team 7, the one they fought so hard to keep, was never happy. They argued, they clashed, they spat insults at each other like cats and dogs in a thunderstorm. What killed them was Kannabi Bridge, when they got a taste of what could have been, and got addicted. It was a wish they couldn’t fulfill, a dream. Because the moment they realized they were friends, Obito changed, Rin died, and Kakashi broke.
The difference between Kakashi and Obito is that Obito gave up, and Kakashi soldiered on. He remained there in the village, a young boy trying to pick up the shards of his shattered life, because he thought that one day, the world might change. His love for Konoha was never stronger than his love for his comrades, even if he pretended that it was for so, so long, and their presence in his life became the strength he needed to march on.
Obito lost one person, and his illusion, his hopes and dreams, disappeared before his eyes. Because finally, he understood everything Madara was trying to say. That the whole system was flawed, that the world was broken and humans were corrupt, and for time immemorial, the rotten cycle would persist. War is an amalgamation of fear, pride, and self-interest. It’s fundamental to what humans are, isn’t it? But even if war were abolished, shinobi themselves are flawed. Hidden villages are communities of murderers that decided to organize, nothing more.
He looks around the quaint little hospital room, dragging along his IV pole, and huffs as he climbs back into bed. Well, maybe that’s over-simplifying it a bit. His methods were wrong, and he acknowledges that his involvement only ever made things worse. But he still firmly believes that nothing will change as it is.
It shouldn’t be his problem. He should be in the Pure Lands, leaving these issues to the living. Damn Kakashi.
No one’s told him directly that Kakashi is at fault for this mess. It’s just a gut feeling he has. Of course the esteemed Hatake brat would find a way to drag his friend back from hell for another fucking lecture.
So it's atonement you want, Bakashi? Fine. I’ll do it. But tell me how, first.
There is nothing Obito can do to repair the lives he ruined. No matter how many good deeds he does, or whatever punishments he takes on, he can never fill the void he left in the lives of all those he hurt. So what does he do? Where does he go from here?
How does he fix this?
The Nara kid comes to see him at some point with a bunch of paperwork. He stands over the side of the bed with his hand in his pocket, smelling strongly of cigarettes, as he drops the stack of files on top of Obito’s lap.
“The fuck’s all this?” he asks, lifting the file on top that reads, Structures and Planning Fiscal Analysis. He looks between the file and the kid, and repeats the question with his eyes.
“Read it. Sign it.” The Nara—fuck, what’s his name? Shikamaru—shrugs, then sits down on the chair by the bed. “Or don’t. Either way, it’s a drag.”
Obito rears back as though burned. “Oh, no. No fucking way I’m doing Bakashi’s work for him. Tell him that he can take his paperwork and shove it up his ass.”
Shikamaru gives him the most deadpan stare, and without another word, drops the fucking Hokage seal on his bedside table, kicks back, and waits.
This has to be layers of illegal. Not that Obito ever cared about bending the rules. But what the fuck?
He’s not doing it, he tells himself. This is Kakashi’s damn job and Kakashi’s damn village, so Kakashi can do his own fucking paperwork. The Nara kid keeps glaring at him, too, and he’s pretty sure he’s very hated for something deeply horrible that he can’t really remember. One of his guys might have gotten to someone the kid liked; that’s usually how it goes. But there are no hateful words. Like with Sakura, he’s calm and collected, as though Obito’s presence is something he’s resigned to.
Obito snubs the paperwork and crosses his arms. He doesn’t understand why it’s here. Shikamaru stays until visiting hours are over, and Obito thinks he’s won their war of attrition. But then he sees that the files are still there on his bedside table.
Shikamaru wins. The reality is that sitting in a hospital bed is miserable, and this at least gives him something to read. So, he goes through that fiscal analysis, and for some reason, it feels familiar. All the paperwork does, actually. He signs some and leaves notes for revision on others, pulling an all-nighter to complete the pile. It’s immeasurably boring, but when he stamps the last page, a sense of accomplishment fills his chest.
Shikamaru collects the pile when visitation hours start the next day and nods approvingly at Obito, which is probably the closest thing to gratitude he’ll ever earn.
Then, he sets a new stack of documents down on the bed, and Obito is ready to scream.
Naruto won’t stop laughing when he sees the piles and piles of paperwork that Shikamaru has dumped onto him, so Obito rolls up a folder and hits him with it. That only makes the brat laugh harder.
Ugh. He hates kids.
Not that Naruto looks like much of a kid anymore.
“Aw, it’s not that bad,” Naruto lies without skipping a beat. Criminal. Truly devious. Obito really missed the mark by not recruiting this one into the Akatsuki. “Just think of it as helping us out, y’know? It’ll only be for a little while.”
“How long is a ‘little while’ to you?”
Naruto shrugs. “A year or two.”
Obito drops his pen. Ink splatters across the page and rolls onto the bedsheet. “I am not sitting here doing Bakashi’s job for a fucking year or two. Is he on an extended vacation, or something? Or did he summon me back to this hellscape so he could run off and be free? I know he didn’t want the hat.”
The boy’s smile fades a bit. “Or something,” he answers, and leaves it at that. “You’re looking well, though. How do you feel?”
Changing the subject. That means he knows something that he’s been told not to say.
“Better,” he shrugs, rolling his shoulders. “Like a seventy-year-old man instead of an eight-year-old, I guess. Does chakra exhaustion usually last this long?” Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t drop in on Kakashi all that often in his Akatsuki days, so he doesn’t know what Kakashi’s recovery time was like.
“Sakura says it’s a special case. I’m sure you’ll feel a young sixty years old soon, Gramps!” And then he barks out another laugh.
“Gee. Thanks.”
The mokuton brat stops in at some point. Tenzō? Or Yamato? Obito’s heard him called both names before. This one won’t even look at Obito’s chest, much less his face, his whole body stiff and rigid as he sits in the visitor chair, worrying a wooden sculpture of a dog between his fingers. With the others, there was always a reason they visited: Sakura for her medical aid, Shikamaru to dump Kakashi’s fucking job into his lap, and Naruto to… be Naruto. Who knows? The kid doesn’t really work within the realm of normal. But this one is just… here. Existing. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t look up. His world has shrunk down to the sculpture in his hands, and everything beyond it ceases to exist.
Obito wishes he would leave. There’s a request for a budget increase with his name on it, begging to be read through and scoffed at.
But he doesn’t. He sits there. And sits.
Obito narrows his eyes. “You don’t have to be here,” he says. “No one asked you to come.”
“Senpai—” Yamato starts, and finally, their eyes meet. It lasts only a second. Yamato lowers his gaze once more. “I made this for Senpai the first time he was hospitalized after one of our missions. All these years, and he still has it.”
He stares at the guy. “Uh-huh. So why’s it here?”
Yamato’s mouth twitches, and he places the little dog sculpture on the bedside table, next to Slave Driver Shikamaru’s latest delivery. It’s crude, clearly made when Yamato was young and still perfecting his technique. “Get well soon.”
He’s left alone with a gift he doesn’t want, scratching his arm anxiously as he stares at it.
Shikamaru comes by like clockwork to collect the fruits of Obito’s labour and drop off more misery for him to sift through. It’s a daily thing now, and Obito starts waving to the kid in greeting. He never gets a wave back, or even a ‘hello’, which is awkward. But it feels rude to stop now.
One day, Shikamaru leans against the wall by the window. It’s raining outside, and he watches it fall, the world misty and vague behind the glass. In his hand is a pack of cigarettes that he opens and closes rhythmically, as though thinking of something.
“He was a good man,” Shikamaru says. “My sensei, Asuma.”
Obito’s eyes widen, and he rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, I know. We went to the academy together.”
“What was he like back then?”
Obito shrugs. “Probably the same. Friendly, amiable. A bit cocky at times. He could be a brat, though. It was actually Asuma who first started calling me Dead Last, and the name stuck.”
Shikamaru nods, crushing the cigarette box in his hand. “Dead Last,” he repeats. “That’s what I’ll call you from now on. It suits you.”
Obito sighs. “Whatever gets you off, Kid. World’s your oyster, and all that. Follow your dreams.”
The rain batters down hard, like a chorus of applause, mocking him.
“I know it’s not worth anything,” he continues, “but I’m sorry for what happened. He didn’t deserve any of it.”
“No, he didn’t,” Shikamaru says. “But that’s the life of a shinobi, isn’t it?”
“Sakura,” he whines, flailing his arm wildly, “c’mon, I don’t need this anymore.”
She checks his vitals, ignoring his pleas.
“You even said I’m looking better. Let’s remove the IV, hey? I’ve been good. Haven’t ripped it out once. Do you know how annoying it is to roll the IV pole into the bathroom every time?”
“I work in a hospital,” she answers with a sigh.
“Right. Yeah, okay. That’s fair. My inquiry still stands.”
Sakura rolls her eyes and checks his chart—more specifically, the notes left from the shift before hers. She isn’t as harsh-edged as she was in the early days. Once, she brought him a little cake for Kakashi’s birthday. Must have bought it for her dear sensei without realizing he hates sweets. She should have made eggplant miso, or grilled eggplant… Or put eggplant in literally anything, honestly.
Sakura leaves for a bit, and he thinks he’s being ignored again, until she comes back and, like a merciful angel, removes the IV drip and bandages the puncture left behind. The back of Obito’s hand is all bruised up, and the phantom pinch is even stronger now that it’s finally gone, but he’s not complaining.
He grins at her, and says, “Thanks.”
Obito doesn’t know how to describe the look she gives him then. It’s harsh, but not unkind. Hurt, but not upset. Happy, and broken.
It nags at him.
“Anytime,” she says softly. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”
Before she can leave, Obito calls to her one more time, “Hey, Sakura?”
She twists around, partway out the door, and looks at him.
“What would atonement entail, in your perspective?”
Sakura tilts her head, eyes to the ceiling and hands in the pockets of her lab coat. “I think that’s different for everyone,” she settles on. “There’s no right or wrong answer, is there? No matter what you do, it won’t be enough. Not for everyone.”
This isn’t his question. They both know that.
“Do better. Be better. Try to make amends however you can. It’s not a goal to reach or an end game to look forward to. It’s something you do every day, so long as you’re alive. You can’t undo the things you’ve done, but you can make sure they don’t happen again.” She shrugs. “Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”
Mokuton Boy is back. This time, with a new dog sculpture. He hands it directly to Obito this time instead of putting it on the table, and Obito turns it over in his hand. The edges are smooth and crisp, the lines are all placed perfectly. Obito could never do something like this, even before he crumbled into dirt or sand or… whatever he was at the end.
“Your craftsmanship has improved,” he remarks absently, holding the sculpture up to his face. It nags at him. “Is this… Bull?”
Yamato’s eyes widen. “Y—” He swallows. “Yes. It’s—I tried.”
Oh, huh. Strange. Obito didn’t even realize he knew the names of Kakashi’s ninken beyond Pakkun, and he only knew Pakkun because they got into a heated debate on a mission once when Obito was still a brat. “Nice work.”
“Thank you, Senpai—um.”
Obito makes a face. “Don’t call me that.”
“Right. Of course. Sorry.”
Over the next seven days, Obito is gifted an army of dog sculptures, one for each of Kakashi’s ninken. Curiously, he can name them all off, one by one.
He starts training in his room now that he isn’t so lethargic. The nurses give him dirty looks but don’t stop him, so it’s probably fine. The first day, he hears them muttering, “He’s at it again,” and feels insulted. Obito has been nothing but a model patient throughout his stay.
Overall, he feels too soft, and hates that. He’s not used to so many weeks of sedentary activity, and if it doesn’t ruin his physique, it’ll fuck up his sanity, at least.
During one of his impromptu training sessions, Naruto stops in with something that smells divine. Obito jumps to his feet and wanders over, snatching the bag out of the boy’s hand without so much as a greeting and narrowing his eyes on the logo.
“Ichiraku?” he asks.
Naruto snatches the bag back. They glare at each other for a moment before Naruto is back to smiling. “Yeah! You know it?”
Obito makes a non-committal noise and sits down on the bed, his legs dangling over the side. “Guess you could say that.”
“How? Didn’t you leave the village when you were like twelve?”
“Thirteen,” he corrects, as though it matters. “Fourteen if you mean when I actually defected. Your parents used to bring us there after a successful mission. Kushina was a big ramen lover.”
Naruto’s face lights up as he sits on the visitor chair and opens up the bag, prepping two bowls of ramen. “Really? I didn’t know they went to Ichiraku, too.”
“Yeah, well.” Obito shrugs. “It was a new restaurant at the time. Not many people knew about it, and Kushina was Teuchi’s biggest customer. Like mother, like son, I guess.”
Naruto hands off a bowl and set of disposable chopsticks, and says, “I wish I could have gone with them.”
Obito stills. The chopsticks slip from his fingers, clattering against the floor. It cuts like a knife.
He took that from them.
Naruto makes a face and retrieves a third set of chopsticks from the bag, presenting them proudly, as though unbothered to be eating with a monster. “Good thing Teuchi always packs extras!”
Obito stares at the steaming bowl in his lap. Tonkotsu ramen with two eggs and extra seaweed.
Kakashi’s favourite.
One day, Obito gets no visitors. It’s nice! It’s quiet, and peaceful, and…
Hm.
He stares at his hands, fiddling with them, waiting for one day to roll into the next. The more he looks, the more he decides that this body isn’t his. It’s not something he’s paid mind to; he doesn’t care if he’s been stuffed into some corpse they got off a battlefield somewhere. It doesn’t matter what shell he’s in, and doesn’t change who he is.
Obito’s gotten used to the regular visits. There’s always someone coming to him, whether it’s the regular miscreants or a fresh new face standing there, flustered, offering well-wishes. When he doesn’t even have work from Shikamaru to distract him, he feels restless. His bedside table is crowded now with finished Hokage office work (thanks, Kakashi), nine tiny wooden dogs of all shapes and sizes, a vase that Ino filled with flowers from her family’s shop, and packets of instant ramen. That creepy Root kid, Sai, taped a bunch of ink paintings onto his walls for ‘inspiration’ and ‘encouragement’. Someone gave him chocolates, but he ate those days ago, and last week, Gai rolled into his room and just cried. A lot. Obito couldn’t make out a word he said through the blubbering.
But today is quiet. It’s lonely, and empty, and he doesn’t feel so weak anymore, but hasn’t been discharged. Part of him wonders if he’s being held here for some reason other than chakra exhaustion. Maybe they’re studying the jutsu that clawed him back from the land of the dead.
Obito can’t sit here anymore. He shuffles off the bed, pools chakra in his feet, and hops out the window, scaling the hospital wall. Man, his chakra reserves are pitiful if he’s having trouble controlling this. Perhaps there’s a reason they’re keeping him around, after all. He makes it to the roof and leaps over the fence, sitting near the water tank and looking out at the village. It’s… different, but he doesn’t know if that’s because it was rebuilt after Nagato’s rampage, or if there’s been work on it since he died. How long ago did he die, anyway? The kids are older now. He supposes calling them ‘kids’ isn’t really appropriate, since he thinks some might have children of their own. Strange to think of that, isn’t it? Naruto has a family now. Sensei is a grandfather. Or would be. If, well.
Obito hangs his head and sighs.
The scars on his fingers make him curious, a bit, about who it is he’s living as. The more he looks at them, the more they look like backlash from lightning—sparks, and the like. He’s actually found more scars on his arms, but they’re so faint that he hardly notices them.
He lifts his shirt. His abdomen is riddled with stripes of malformed skin, lacerations from swords and patches from burns. This guy’s been through a lot. A veteran, one who’s seen war. He’s pale and slender, but Obito’s been working on building his muscle back up. His legs are long, as are his arms, and his fingers are thin. Obito was… stockier, he thinks. There was more colour to his skin—the natural parts, anyway—and his scars were localized to his right side. (Thanks, Iwa.)
Obito scrubs his hands over his face and feels yet another scar on his left cheek. Right, yeah. He noticed that a while back, when his body felt like a feeble seventy-year-old’s. This guy’s seen it all, hasn’t he?
He flops back to lie flat and watch the clouds, his fingers tracing the ridge along his cheek, following it up over his eye. A third war veteran, then. Iwa was always going after the eyes in those days, the bastards. Iwa and Kiri. If they weren’t trying to blind their opponent, they were prying ocular Kekkei Genkai from their hosts.
There’s something here that he doesn’t want to see.
Obito folds his hands over his stomach. The sky is bright and beautiful, the air is fresh. He sees birds flying by and wishes he could join them. But for how exhausted he is of the hospital, something is keeping him there.
By no will of his own, he’s planted roots.
It scares him, a bit. How comfortable he is.
Two hours later, the door to the roof opens, and Sakura comes running through. She’s panting, eyes wet as she looms over him, her shadow blocking the light from his face. She’s… worried. About him. For him.
Or maybe for someone else.
“Don’t,” she barks, “ ever disappear like that again, Kakashi-sen—”
She covers her mouth with her hands, eyes wide and arms shaking. She steps back. The sun hits Obito’s face, and he squints.
His heart races in his chest, and he places a hand over it. Calm down. I should be the one freaking out, not you.
“I needed fresh air,” he says with a shrug. “Isn’t that good for you, or something?”
Her slip-up goes unaddressed.
Sakura composes herself and clears her throat. Her eyes are still wet. “Yeah, sure. But you can’t just wander off without telling someone. Just—just talk to us next time, okay? Please?”
Because if Obito goes away, so does her sensei.
Obito groans loudly and sits up, glaring dully at her. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say.” When she offers him a hand, he takes it, and sways a bit on his feet. Obito swallows his uncertainty, and looks her up and down. “What, no snack? It’s Tuesday. You usually bring me tea on Tuesdays.”
Sakura lets out a long, heavy breath, and guides him to the stairs. “As though you deserve it,” she grumbles. “You don’t even like the tea half the time.”
“I like having the option,” he corrects.
That night, when most of the hospital is quiet and the patients are sleeping, Obito wanders the halls until he comes up to the public restroom. He steps inside and finds it empty, so he shuffles a little further in. When he catches the corner of his sleeve in the mirror, he takes a breath.
He can do this.
He has to.
If he doesn’t, he’ll break.
Obito steps out, a long mirror glaring at him as he leans his palms on the counter. A pale-haired ghost stares back.
“Fuck,” he whispers, wiping a hand over his mouth. It doesn’t look right on that face, doesn’t sound right. But as he speaks, he notes the hints of his old friend’s voice in his throat and feels sick. He speaks with a different cadence than Kakashi did, so he never noticed before. Kakashi’s slow, low drawl is long dead in this body.
It’s the first time he sees Kakashi’s face. High cheekbones, a long nose. A little mole by his mouth. His lips are dry thanks to the weather, and he looks a bit unwell, thanks to Obito’s crumbling mental fortitude.
Matching grey eyes, the left bisected by a vertical scar. The Sharingan is gone, just as Obito remembers it to be.
“Hey,” Obito calls, trying to level his voice, leaning in close to the mirror, as though if he peers deep enough into his eyes, he’ll find someone else. “So—you’re dead? Kakashi?”
His heart races, and he grabs at his chest.
It’s not supposed to be like this.
“Were—were you already…”
Bile claws up the back of his throat, and he runs a hand through his hair. Every motion he makes looks wrong. He can’t match Kakashi’s body language, or his facial expressions, and the image in the mirror feels like an imposter.
“I didn’t kill you, right? It wasn’t me. Please don’t say you did this for me.”
There’s no answer. There never would be, of course. Obito claws at the counter top, his knuckles flushed white.
If Kakashi died, why is Obito here? Why do this, any of this? They could have been together in the Pure Lands, they could have—
Obito was dead for years, but in all that time, he never saw Rin.
He sinks to the ground and leans back against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest. Kakashi’s heart continues to thump wildly in his chest, pulsing from his ears to his toes. With a rolling current, it persists. Reality washes through him like high tide.
The weight is too heavy to bear.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there. Sakura finds him and crouches down, her arms wrapped over her knees. Obito tries not to look, because he knows now what she sees when their eyes meet, and the guilt is choking him.
“Sensei was really sick,” she says. “We knew he wouldn’t make it.”
Obito listens numbly, his palms covering his face. “Shouldn’t I be sick, then? Considering.” He removes one hand to gesture tiredly at himself.
Sakura shakes her head. “The host’s cause of death doesn’t affect the transplanted soul. It can’t kill you twice, so to speak.”
Fine. Whatever.
“And I’m supposed to thank him, or something?”
“No,” she sighs, hanging her head. “He asked us to keep you until Naruto could be sworn in. Kakashi-sensei was training him, but…”
Obito nods.
“After that, whatever happens… That’s up to you.”
They give him a discharge date and ask him to wear Kakashi’s mask once he leaves the hospital. Not many people know the truth about what’s happening with their Hokage, and they’d like to keep it that way, at least until Naruto’s coronation. Fine. He can do that much, if it’s part of the atonement Kakashi seeks. What right does he have to complain, after what he’s done?
When the day finally comes, it’s the mokuton boy who sits with him. He brings another sculpture, this time a little toad, and a fresh change of clothes. Obito stares at the shirt, at the attached mask he’s always associated with his teammate, as he holds it between his hands.
Yamato, as always, won’t look up.
Now, Obito knows why.
He pulls the curtain around his bed and gets changed, feeling wrong as he slips the fabric over his mouth and nose. Breathing through it is strange, and he can’t imagine it’ll be comfortable after a few hours of wearing it. How Kakashi always did, or why, Obito doesn’t know. But so long as he keeps it on in public, he should be okay to remove it when he’s alone, or whatever.
The curtain screeches open, and Yamato stares at him, wide-eyed. Obito rubs the back of his neck, trying to ignore it, and nods at all the gifts left for him on the bedside table. “You got a storage scroll, or something?”
“Oh, um…” Yamato pats himself down and slips one free of his belt, holding it out. “Here. I can help if—if you want.”
“Yeah,” Obito sighs, snatching up the scroll, “sure. Thanks, Tenzō.”
Obito lays the scroll flat across his mattress and does mental math of how he wants to go about this. Stacking things properly in a storage scroll can help avoid items crushing each other when they’re unsealed, so he piles the lightest, most fragile items first, and seals them away. The last items sealed will be the first ones unsealed, and the ones at the bottom of the pile.
He remembers the ink paintings Sai gifted him on the wall and supposes those would fall under ‘fragile’, too. Ah, what a pain.
“Hey, could you get those down,” he asks, pointing at the art he’d been bombarded with two weeks ago, “while I—”
Obito glances over his shoulder to see Yamato staring at him, wide-eyed and still.
“Tenzō?” he prods, and the man shakes himself free of his stupor. “Something wrong?”
“No, it’s nothing, I just—” Yamato clears his throat and shuffles past Obito to the wall. “The paintings, right?”
“Um. Yeah. Thanks.”
Obito eyes the mokuton boy a little longer, searching for answers, but gives up. Ah, well. It doesn’t matter.
He picks up Naruto’s ramen stash and wonders where on the scale of ‘fragile’ and ‘sturdy’ he should land it.
Konoha looks different when walking through it than it does dropping in through Kamui. Obito hangs back as he’s drawn through the village, taking in the shops and homes they pass by. He hasn’t walked its streets since he was a teenager, long before it was rebuilt, well beyond the years it’s known under Kakashi’s rule. The buildings are taller and the streets are wider. There are plenty of parks in place of training grounds. That’s nice, he thinks. The people look happy.
If Obito succeeded, these people would be dormant right now, living under an illusion as the God Tree feasted upon them.
He grips his chest. Kakashi’s heart is steady beneath his fingertips.
They stop at the Hokage residence. The whole thing is surreal, staring up at that building he used to think would one day be his, back when he was too young and dumb to understand the magnitude of his dreams. Obito climbs the front steps and deactivates the wards at the door, amused to find that he inexplicably knows the key. The door swings open to a stale home, and he takes his shoes off, looking around.
Yamato stays outside. “Kakashi-senpai has to report to the Hokage office at eight tomorrow,” he says. “Please, don’t be late.”
Obito rolls his eyes. “Wouldn’t it be in-character if I were?”
Yamato’s disappointed frown says it all.
“I won’t, I won’t. Get home, Tenzō; I’ll be fine here.”
“Right… Um. Goodbye, then.”
Obito waves absently at him.
He’s left alone in this place that isn’t his and flicks on the light. There are slippers waiting for him in the genkan and a dusty film over most of the furniture. He knows the layout despite never being here before, and turns into the sitting room. There are books scattered across the coffee table, as though Kakashi left them out to read when he got back from the hospital. A familiar orange cover sits with a bookmark partway through, and Obito moves in, plucking it up. The spine is bent, the cover is wrinkled and torn and faded. It’s well-loved. Kakashi must have been rereading it before… well. Obito opens it to the marked page, and finds a sticky note wedge between the pages. He pulls it free, drawn to a little drawing of Kakashi’s signature.
‘You should give it a try. It’s not porn; it’s a love story.’
Obito rolls his eyes. “A love story with porn in it,” he grumbles.
Kakashi left this for him, huh?
There’s another sticky note on one of the other books, a neon yellow beacon against its dark cover, and he bends down to read it.
‘Naruto struggles with economics. If you run into any problems, use this for reference.’
“So I’m supposed to act as a tutor for a job I never earned? C’mon, Bakashi. Be realistic.”
This isn’t to say Obito has no experience; he ruled over Kiri as the Shadow Mizukage for quite a long time. But there’s something inherently different about his intent.
With a forlorn sigh, Obito sets down the flowers he’s been carrying since the hospital, grabs out his (Yamato’s, technically) storage scroll, and unseals its contents. They spill out across the floor in a heap, but thankfully, it doesn’t look like anything is broken.
No idea what to do with it all, though.
Obito scratches his head and bends down next to the pile, carefully freeing the paintings first. He wonders if he should get frames. Kakashi seems like the type to frame his student’s artwork… Was Sai one of his students? No, he’s been in Root… But he’s still a former teammate.
Kakashi would frame them, he decides. He was sentimental enough for that.
He carries the ramen into the kitchen and stores it in a drawer. Shockingly, the little plant in the window is still alive, so someone must have been taking care of the residence while he’s been gone. There’s a sticky note attached to the pot, too, and when he peels it off, he sees that it’s care instructions.
‘Take care of Ukki for me. He’s a good friend.’
Kakashi Hatake, Lord Sixth. Plant lover.
Obito crumples up the sticky note and goes to throw it in the trash, but stops. Instead, he smooths out its wrinkles and places it back on the pot. Kakashi’s chicken scratch handwriting glares back at him mockingly.
“I know how to take care of your precious plant,” he says. “I’m not gonna kill it, jeez. You’re fucking demanding for a dead guy, you know that? I don’t remember making any—”
“You’d better become Hokage.”
He bites his tongue.
“Is that why I’m here, Kakashi?” he asks, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You don’t need to hang off my every word like that.”
Obito searches for somewhere to put the wooden sculptures, cradling them in his arms as he climbs the stairs to the second floor. He pokes his head into the study, which is just as chaotic as the coffee table in the living room. There are papers scattered everywhere, books on top of books, and a bookcase lined with even more of Yamato’s homemade gifts. Kakashi kept all of them.
With a sigh, he lines the new additions up next to the old, smiling as he mentally names off each of Kakashi’s ninken and places them on the shelf together. Can he summon them? Maybe he’ll test it out. It might break their hearts if he does.
While organizing the desk, trying to make sense of Kakashi’s chaos, he finds a letter addressed to him beneath some of the paperwork. He picks it up, tears open the envelope, and unfolds the paper inside.
Yo, Obito!
Obito narrows his eyes on the writing.
How are we doing? Well, I hope. You see, soon I will be very dead. You’ve probably noticed that by now.
He scoffs, rolling his eyes.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to finish my business here before I go, so I was hoping you could help me. I did carry your Sharingan for you for more than a few years, you know. The least you could do is return the favour.
“Oh yeah? And who got famous off that Sharingan, you fucker?”
Naruto’s so close, but there’s still some training he has left to do, and the council won’t approve of him yet. He needs that final push. I wanted to be there to see it. It would have been nice to retire, too. I was supposed to go on a trip with Gai afterward. But since it came to this, I won’t complain.
He licks his lips, staring hard at the line at the bottom of the page.
Once more, will you see the world with me?
Obito sinks down, buries his face against his knees, and crushes the letter in his grip.
“Fine,” he shudders, “one more time, Kakashi. Let’s do it.”
Their heart beats a strong, steady rhythm against their hand.
Naruto comes to visit him at the Hokage office, and Obito shoves all his paperwork the brat’s way, leaving him to gape like a fish.
“What’s all this?” Naruto asks, making a face as he picks a paper up between his fingers, as though it’s dirty.
“Your studies.” He nods to the sitting area. “Grab a chair. You’re going through all this with me before you leave.”
“Do I even have clearance for all this?”
“You do now,” he says, and throws a thumb over his shoulder at Shikamaru. “He’s certainly not gonna say anything. I sure as hell don’t have clearance, but he hasn’t kicked me out yet, has he?”
Shikamaru clears his throat.
“Now, sit.”
Naruto and Shikamaru exchange glances. Soon, a bulky chair is dragged up next to the Hokage seat, and Obito settles in for an afternoon of lectures.
Sakura is going to kick him out again. He can see it in her eyes. It’s the third time in as many months that he’s sought her out for a strange new symptom developing in his body, and as he holds out his arm, he feels himself shrinking.
“Atopic dermatitis,” she says blandly. “Eczema. I warned you about it before, didn’t I?”
Obito looks to the side. “Sounds familiar.”
She leans over her desk for a pen and scrawls out a prescription, shoving it in his face. He squints at her doctor’s scrawl and recognizes the name of the medication from one of the containers of cream in Kakashi’s bathroom cabinet. Oops.
“So… He’s okay?” Obito asks, just to be sure.
“Yes,” Sakura sighs, “he’s— you’re fine. Just like you were fine three weeks ago.”
“Oh,” he nods. “Okay. So when do you get off?”
She’s already ushering him to the door. “Not until the evening.”
“So no tea, then? It’s Tuesday.”
“Do you even like tea?”
“Nah. I think Kakashi does, though. It doesn’t taste as bad these days.”
Sakura stares at him, the prescription held between his fingers, and the mask over his face. He forgoes the Hokage robe whenever he can; not only is it a big, flashing sign to all who see it, but it’s damn hot. And the hat is stupid.
Her annoyance falls away, and she looks at the calendar above her desk. “I can do Thursday afternoon?”
A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Sounds good.”
Then he’s kicked out.
The nice thing about training up the next Hokage is that it means less work for Obito. He looms over the desk like some sagely wiseman while his little protégé squints at tiny words of text, asking questions when he doesn’t understand something. Kakashi’s knowledge is more useful than Obito’s own in these instances, because the laws between old Kiri and current Konoha are vastly different. But whenever an issue crops up, the answer pops into his head, like magic.
By the four-hour mark, Naruto’s completely burnt out, bent forward on the desk on all those important documents, snoring away.
Obito clicks his tongue. “Cheeky brat. He’s the one who wants the hat.”
“You wanted it, too, didn’t you?” Shikamaru asks. His hands are twitching, one wrapped around the cigarette case in his pocket, so he’ll be stepping out for a smoke soon. “But you’ve done nothing but complain since you got here.”
“Yeah, well.” Obito shrugs. “I hold a lot of regrets, but that isn’t one of them.”
He peels some of the papers out from underneath Naruto’s arms, and supposes he should finish what he can before it gets too late. There’ll be plenty more work to torture the kid with in the morning.
On the day of the coronation, Obito wakes up entirely too early. He drags himself out of the office, where he’d fallen asleep the night before, and into the bathroom on the main floor. Staring back at him is a very tired, very sleep-deprived Kakashi, with thick bags under his eyes and a miserable look on his face. He smooths his hands over his cheeks, trying to wash away the exhaustion, and brushes his teeth.
There are several sticky notes attached to the edge of the mirror, instructing him on which soaps and shampoos to buy, both for his sensitive nose and equally sensitive skin. For a man on his last legs, he sure had the time to micromanage every aspect of their life. Even all these months later, Obito finds more notes hidden in places he never thought to check before, and he keeps every last one.
‘Remember: the last Friday of the month is Ichiraku night. Don’t skip out—you’ll make my students very sad.’
‘Use scentless shampoos unless you want to be nauseous all day. I wouldn’t recommend it.’
‘Hello, Obito! This is my bank code. Please use it responsibly, and when you’re done with my body, make sure to distribute my wealth fairly before you go.’
After today, he’ll have to pack up and leave so the next Hokage can occupy the residence. He wonders if he can find all Kakashi’s notes before then.
Obito pinches his cheek, and watches Kakashi wince in the mirror. He gets some mild satisfaction out of it if he pretends he’s not the one feeling the pain.
“Stop worrying so much,” Obito mutters. “We’ll finish this together, just like you wanted.”
He washes his hair, takes the longest shower of his life, and prepares for the ceremony that’s to take place in four more hours, stepping out of the bathroom with a towel draped over his shoulders. Begrudgingly, he’ll have to wear the hat— ugh, where did I put that thing? How do I keep losing track of it when it’s so damn big?
The walls in the living room are decorated by ink paintings. When Sai and Ino stopped by and saw them, he found himself with a new one every damn month, and he had to start hanging them up in the office upstairs. Unlike Kakashi, Obito bothers to put his shit back when he’s done with it, so his table is clear and the shelves are organized. Tenzō keeps bringing more of those statues, too, which are getting steadily more elaborate with every compliment Obito gives him. If they get any bigger, they won’t fit on the shelves. The kitchen cabinets are filled with boxes of tea from all over the Elemental Nations. If he ever says he likes one of the teas he shares with Sakura, he finds far too much of it shoved into his arms later that night. A toad plush eyes him from the top of his fridge, where Naruto placed it last time he dropped by. His kids keep hiding things around the house and Obito only ever finds them days or weeks later.
When their Team 7 was still around, he never thought Kakashi would change. He came off so self-serving and rude, so impossibly uncaring of the people around him, that Obito saw the future, and in it, saw Kakashi alone. But he looks around this house and struggles to see where it hasn’t been touched by all those people who care about him.
Obito smiles, staring at this the junk he never bought, and admits defeat. Alright, fine. Maybe Kakashi’s better at this whole ‘teamwork’ thing than Obito is, after all. He concedes.
Before he can locate his hat, the doorbell rings, ruining a perfectly good, sentimental moment. Obito groans, stomps over to the front door, and flings it open.
He stares vaguely at the tall man on the other side, and waves. “Hey, Cousin.”
The ceremony is an absolute disaster. Naruto’s late, so they have Konohamaru transform into him when the crowds start to grouch. When they send someone to fetch their new yet absent Hokage, they find him paralyzed, thanks to his angry little daughter having an epiphany about her Byakugan. Obito gets to hand off the hat to someone it doesn’t belong to, and though the villagers are none the wiser, he’s embarrassed at how much of a train wreck it all is. This is Naruto’s big day, after all. The one he’s been waiting for all his life.
Naruto does eventually show up, still looking a little sluggish after being rescued by his wife, and the celebration afterwards is in full swing. His kids are thoroughly scolded, though, and Obito snorts, watching Hinata continue to lecture them.
Obito leans on the railing of a restaurant balcony, observing the merriment below while nursing his glass of water. He isn’t alone for long, as a familiar dark figure appears next to him with a bottle between his hands.
They haven’t really talked. Sasuke doesn’t stay in the village for long and spends most of his time wandering around doing… whatever it is he does. The last time he was here was when Kakashi… well.
He knows, though. The others told him—Naruto, probably, and Sakura. It makes sense that he’d be wary.
“I wonder why he chose to bring you back, of all people,” Sasuke says.
Obito shrugs. “I probably had the best resume. Like me or not, I did shadow-run Kiri’s government and organize the Akatsuki at the same time. I’ve got credentials.”
Sasuke looks away. Below, there’s a bunch of cheers as Naruto walks by in his big, funny hat, looking entirely too embarrassed for someone as brash as he is. “I don’t think that’s it.”
No, it’s not. Obito runs his finger along the rim of his glass, tilting it in his hand. “So your trips outside the village,” he prods, “that’s your atonement?”
“Something like that.”
“Do you think it’s enough?”
“I don’t know,” Sasuke says, sipping from his bottle. “I don’t think that’s something for me to decide. But it feels right to me.”
Obito nods, and Sasuke steps away to hunt down his friend in the crowds.
His duty to Kakashi is over now, he supposes. This is all Kakashi wants from him, and now that he’s here, he doesn’t know what to do. The seal binding him to this body is on the back of his neck; he noticed it at the end of his hospital stay. If he wants to go now, he can. Konoha can finally bury Kakashi, and Obito can see his teammates again.
In his chest, Kakashi’s heart beats strong. Steady and calm, completely out of sync with Obito’s stress. He presses his fingers over it, counting the rhythm to ease his nerves.
The moon above hangs behind the clouds, pale and big as it watches them. Though he might see it, it will forever remain out of reach. Kakashi’s like that, too. His body is warm, and air fills his lungs. His muscles ache, and the steadily fading rash on his arm still itches, now and then. There are age lines forming around his eyes, marked by the steady march of time. But Kakashi isn’t really here anymore.
“I give you an eye, you give me a body,” Obito says with a snort. “Always gotta one-up me, don’t you, Bakashi?”
Yet he doesn’t feel lonely.
“Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto calls, and Obito looks down to see him making dramatic gestures with his arms. “C’mere! You can’t just mope up there all night!”
“Watch me!”
Obito laughs at the grumpy face Naruto gives him, and shoos Kakashi’s students away. He’s fine where he is. The night is long, the breeze is cool, there’s merriment in the air, and crowds really aren’t his thing. But he likes watching, trying to place the names of the shinobi who pass through. Being Hokage means that teams brief him on their missions, and he’s starting to know the current Konoha more than he cared to before.
Through the currents of bodies, he locates a certain man and his clone-like underling in their garish green jumpsuits as they bark out laughs and speak animatedly over the raucous crowds.
“Gai!” he shouts, waving his arm wildly as his friend tries to locate him. Obito grins, and Gai’s face lights up. “Wanna go on a trip?”